Joe Wilson, Van Jones, and the watermelon hypothesis

UPDATE: More on “Joe” Wilson: His name’s not Joe; he’s linked to a racist group and segregationist Strom Thurmond. He probably planned the outburst and has voted against health care for vets 11 times.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) showed a grave lack of respect for the president and congressional protocol when he shouted, “You lie!” at Mr. Obama as he insisted in his speech last night that health care reform would not mean insuring illegal immigrants. (The president was not lying.)

Wilson later sounded contrite, insisting his outburst was “spontaneous,” and that he “let [his] emotions get the best of” him.

Here’s a prime example, then, of a politician using hot-button race issues to foment populist anger that will serve his corporate masters by defeating health care reform.

Is this an off-topic post? So far, perhaps, but Van Jones was a victim of a very similar phenomenon: Glenn Beck used fear of blacks and reds to oust the former green jobs adviser—but the campaign originated with the industry front group Americans for Prosperity. (Americans for Prosperity is behind the Hot Air tour—which calls global warming “hysteria”—and is funded by members of the Koch family, who have holdings in the chemical and oil industries.) The organization’s policy director, Phil Kerpen, was Beck’s guest in the segment that began the smear campaign.

Green jobs are a major threat to the energy lobby’s central talking point: that going green will destroy our economy, which the lobby further “simplifies” by suggesting that carbon regulations will turn the country communist. Kerpen calls this the “watermelon hypothesis“: green on the outside, red on the inside (coincidence or not, you decide). As a black man cheerleading for green jobs, Jones essentially had a target on his back.

If you doubt that race played a major part in Jones’ demise, read after the jump for a collection of all of the racially tinged comments readers submitted in response to my post on Jones, which barely mentioned his race.

Each paragraph is a separate comment; almost all are from separate user logins.

But senior government officials have to be above the trash-talk that you’d normally hear on the basketball court. Are potty-mouthed idiots what you’re expect of an adminstration that calls itself “Change you can believe in”?

Frankly, I am very tired of the so-called justice seekers like Van Jones and Obama and others like them because their bigotry runs deep and their agenda does not make the world a better place for everyone, just a few.

Glenn Beck was outing Van Jones in all his raving lunacy when the rest of the mainstream media was studiously ignoring the facts. Can’t be seen to criticize a Black man, you know. The “truther” business was just the nail in the coffin; Obama can’t have people spending too much time debating the merits of a Black socialist like Van Jones who has problems with White people, because then we’d inevitably turn our eyes to the White House and realize what a horrible mistake had been made last November.

When Glenn Beck said Obama hates white people I thought he was crazy…until I remembered Reverend Wright and heard about Van Jones. Doesn’t seem crazy anymore.

Mr.Jones is savvy enough to know that but for afrocentric bullys like him it would be tomming to admit that half of the nation should not be named called just because they differ politically,even in jest.He will surely rack this up to a political lynching because of course he couldn’t posibly be wrong,its those a-holes that were out to get him.

I know Van Jones is a radical extremist communist hardcore racist bent on destroying our American ideals and our America.

What about the Rodney King riots, the looting, the brain bashing with a brick of Reginald Denny caught on helicopter camera was peaceful?

Was Obama really a Kenyan citizen, and why don’t we ever read about this stuff in the Chron?

How could the guy who was the statewide director for Arianna Huffington’s campaign for Governor be an extremist? How could a guy that hates whites and asians equally be a racist?

Get ready for 8 years of a-hull (I couldn’t use the same word you and your racist commie buddy use because the filter wouldn’t let me) Republican White Polluters Rule, because we’ve heard enough.

Van Jone’s racist statements about whites and asians being the only population to breed serial killers are ridiculous. (Ed note: See those comments here.)

His race baiting politics were either unknown to Obama, or endorsed.

If people like Van Jones, Rev. Wright, William Ayers, and Henry Gates keep popping up around the president they will destroy his Legitimacy.

Van Jones; the ( hardly ) Rev Wright……..who’s the next knee-jerk, extremist up for exposure? I’m glad that we are seeing all of this. I am glad that this country, which seated a black man as President, is finally seeing what urban dwellers see all the time: the racism of Black America; the vitriol, the hatred, the resentment. I am beginning to think that Obama is going to be a one-term president, which I find unfortunate. But after the whole professor Gates incident, I became uncomfortably aware at our own Presidents bias to race, and at how whites are deemed “racist until proven innocent”. Van Jones spoke his truth, and he got a reaction to it.

Very clear Obama is surrounding himself with radicals, with socialists, with racists, with those whose underlying intent is to defeat and destroy our traditional American values. From top to bottom of his administration there are unsavory appointees who are not thought of as patriotic Americans, not at all. Last year, I gave benefit of the doubt to Obama. I dismissed Wright, Pfleger, Ayers and the rest as mistaken youthful naiveté on the part of Obama. Boy howdy, was I ever wrong!

Oh yes, yet another poor, uneducated black man being put down by the man. But wait, this guy has a Yale law degree but was duped by the man into signing a 9/11 truth petition.

What the exposure of Mr. Jones really showed was that Rev. Wright was not a fluke and the President is appointing people just like him into our government.